Consumer Guide Album

Ian Matthews: Some Days You Eat the Bear, and Some Days the Bear Eats You [Elektra, 1974]
This is Matthews's eighth album of the decade (fifth solo), and though people still tell me he's deserving, I think he epitomizes the homogeneity of the new (country-rock) schlock. If the proof of his acuity is his covers of such songs as "Propinquity" and "Blue Blue Day" and "Da Doo Ron Ron" and (on this LP) "Ol' 55" and "Dirty Work" and "Do I Still Figure in Your Life" and "I Don't Wanna Talk About It," the proof of his soft edges is that the originals are always more idiosyncratic. C+